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8.
EDITORIAL
Does the Metric System Measure Up? here is general agreement these days that it is inevitable that the
TUnited States will “go metric.” But there is a small group of people who are asking whether we have really considered all the angles. The forces of proposition and opposition came into sharp, if gentlemanly, conflict a t the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the United States of America Standards Institute (USASI) held in Washington, D. C., during December 1968. One of the main arguments used to urge adoption of the metric system is essentially economic. Since 90% of the world uses the metric system, use of the system in the U.S. would, according to this argument, bolster U.S. exports to metric countries. By the same token, of course, imports would also be expected to rise, and a Department of Commerce study has been initiated to assess whether the (export) advantages of metrication would outweigh the (import) disadvantages. This economic argument is among those used by H. A. R. Binney of the British Standards Institution, Britain, ironically enough, is abandoning the “British” system of measurement in the belief that a refusal to go metric would close her out of world markets, and in a hope that the change will somehow alleviate that country’s chronic balance of payments problem. Mr. Binney’s faith in the metric system as an economic cure-all was, however, vigorously attacked a t the USASI meeting by H. E. Chesebrough, Director General of Simca and a former Vice-president of Chrysler Corporation. Not only does Mr. Chesebrough doubt that a switch to the metric system would improve the U. S . trade balance, but he also feels that the forces pushing in favor of metrication have been masked by arguments that are, for the most part, gigantic red herrings. The focus of Chesebrough’s attack is the assumption that when all the world is metric, all problems of interchangeability will disappear, an assumption that is a t least implicit in the urgings of most metric proponents. That this assumption is not valid is clearly demonstrated by a few everyday examples. An American-made electric razor will not work in many European countries, not because its dimensions were designed in inches, but because the frequency of electric current and the configuration of electrical connectors and terminals are different-factors that would be unaffected by merely going metric. Again, the use of the metric system on the European continent does not seem to have resulted in any international agreement on the number of threads per centimeter on threaded connectors, any more than common use of the British system on both sides of the Atlantic has resulted in interchangeable British and American nuts and bolts. Despite our belief in the inherent logic and beauty of the metric system, we must concur with Mr. Chesebrough: Before leaping into the metric system we ought to take a good hard look to see if the domestic disruption which will inevitably result-ranging from the wholesale replacement of road signs to the resizing of whiskey bottlesis really a price that we are prepared to pay.
VOL. 6 1
NO. 2
FEBRUARY
1969
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